


nunc est bibendum

by remis777



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who: Eighth Doctor Adventures - Various Authors
Genre: Gen, M/M, Nine wears Fitz' leather jacket, Twelve plays Fitz's electric guitar, feat. that reminiscence in Coldheart that lives rent-free in my head, so here you all go, some light angst but mostly fluff, this is a flagrant violation of the rule that all scenes must serve a purpose, this whole thing started with a pun i thought of, unseen moments in the TARDIS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:55:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23674993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/remis777/pseuds/remis777
Summary: The Twelfth Doctor drinks, and remembers.
Relationships: Eighth Doctor & Fitz Kreiner, Eighth Doctor/Fitz Kreiner
Comments: 6
Kudos: 34





	nunc est bibendum

**Author's Note:**

> It's my first time. Be gentle.

The Doctor liked tea.

As far as beverage choices went, it wasn't anything particularly bizarre or out of the ordinary. He supposed it could be quite British of him to like tea (though most emphatically not _English_ ), but it could just as well be Chinese of him, or Indian, or any other Earth culture that liked tea, really. Steeped leaf water seemed to be popular in many places around the universe, but the Doctor found he liked Earth tea best. Something about the atmosphere or the soil nutrients, maybe? He supposed _that_ could be quite human of him.

Sat back as he was in his armchair overlooking the TARDIS console room, he chanced a look around, noting the Clara-lessness of it all — Clara was off doing what Claras did, on a break after a few weeks' travel following the whole Santa Claus business, since, as she had so succinctly put it, _I love travelling with you but I need a break from the eyebrows —_ and so he had decided to get some reading done. 

It was interesting, thought the Doctor, leaning back into the armchair and gazing at his steaming cup, that tea was still his beverage of choice in this incarnation. He certainly _liked_ other beverages; coffee he enjoyed, juice and lemonade he loved after a particularly exerting outing, or a hot beach or desert day. He didn't necessarily object to alcohol: he'd take a nip of some Aldebaran brandy now and then, and if things were particularly rough he could always rock up to Betelgeuse Five and take solace in a Pan-Galactic Gargle-Blaster. He'd never quite taken to wine, though he supposed the people with whom you drank it made a difference; good old Hafez always made wine taste sweeter and more delicious with a well-put verse, but the Doctor's own solitary explorations of the TARDIS' _cave à vin_ always seemed to leave something to be desired.

He'd wanted to enjoy a nice cuppa, as it were, after a long time without (it was usually the not-him one who forced him to consume food and beverages), but a thorough search of the TARDIS kitchen had turned up only some old loose-leaf Turkish tea. The Doctor had set some to brew in a china teapot he'd found in the TARDIS' aptly named China Room (not to be confused with the Chinese room, which was an entirely different matter — most of the China Room's china had actually been made in Staffordshire). He'd rinsed a few decades’ worth of dust out of it, set the tea bubbling, and, feeling peckish, had gone off in search of something to nibble on.

Biscuits seemed particularly appealing. He chanced upon a half-empty packet of Jammie Dodgers, but felt they were a bit too _passé,_ and put them aside; of custard creams he could find neither hide nor hair, despite the fact that he was certain Clara had brought at least five packets onboard the last time she'd been here, for “provisions” (could the TARDIS send objects backward and forward along his personal timeline? A question to consider). Finally, he found a box of some of those biscuits you always found in hospitals — the ones with the pink icing — and circled back to the console room via the kitchen, taking the teapot with him and putting it next to his armchair. He was coming back again from the kitchen, where he'd picked up a clear glass cup to drink from, when he noticed a door on the right side of the hallway that hadn't been there the last time. 

Now, contrary to most people's opinions, the Doctor liked to think that he wasn't entirely oblivious. (Across all of time and space, dozens of individuals who had a whiff of time about them suddenly, simultaneously scoffed.) A door that magically appeared out of nowhere was a pretty big hint that his old girl wanted him to take a look at whatever was behind that door. Having laboriously come to this conclusion, the Doctor nodded to himself, and resolutely kept walking.

Straight into a door.

The door on which he had bruised his nose was the same one as before, which had moved from its position on the corridor wall to a new wall that hadn't existed five seconds earlier, literally _smack_ in the middle of the hallway. Deciding that obedience, in this case, was the better part of valour, and rubbing his smarting nose, the Doctor opened the door and walked into whatever room the TARDIS was so keenly insisting he see. As the light started to grow brighter, he found that it was one of the myriad rooms in the TARDIS that fell in the 'miscellaneous' category: it had no particular designation or purpose, but was just a room that things from all over time and space found their way into thanks to the TARDIS' mysterious internal workings.

The design of the room was the factory setting model: white walls and floor that provided the ambient light, and, besides a few round things (!) on the walls, nothing in particular in terms of _décor_. There were a few wardrobes, chests, and armoires leaning against the walls, with some clothes and other various, unrelated objects disseminated around the room: an old sixties electric guitar (he couldn't remember where he'd acquired that) was leaning on the wall nearest the door, with a pile of yo-yos sat in the corner, and, right in front of his feet, there was an old, worn, black leather jacket, which his ninth incarnation had been particularly fond of.

He picked it up with a nostalgic smile, thinking of runs across London with a warm hand in his, and dusted it off, slinging it on his forearm so he could go put it back in the wardrobe room where it belonged. It was certainly nice to have a little reminder of the past, but beyond that he wasn't able to see why the TARDIS had been so insistent on him entering this room. Chalking it up to another one of the old girl's fancies, he turned to leave, when his attention was caught by the guitar next to the door. It was black and shiny and metallic, polished, with a look that fitted with what the Doctor had been told was his "new aesthetic", so he grabbed it and closed the door, which itself vanished, along with the wall that had done such damage to the Doctor's nasal septum, in the blink of an eye. 

Which was what had led him here, sitting in his armchair with a freshly poured cup of tea.

The guitar and the jacket were leaning against the nearest bookshelf where the Doctor had left them, and he wondered once more where he'd acquired the guitar. He seemed to vaguely remember someone else playing it, but because of his regenerative abilities those kind of memories were never a guarantee that it wasn't actually him in the first place. No matter. There were more important things to think about. Namely, finally having a drink.

The Doctor stretched his legs out onto the ottoman in front of him, and opened the book he'd been meaning to start reading, a promising new English translation of his friend Hafez's poems. He could, of course, read them in the original Persian, but he was interested to see how a human living seven centuries after the fact would fare, and to compare them to his own translations to see if he’d missed anything. He opened the small book to the first poem, picked up his (still steaming) cup, pausing to admire the deep ruby red colour of the tea through his glass, inhaled deeply, and took a sip.

****

_However old, incapable,_

_and heartsick I may be,_

_The moment I recall your face_

_my youth's restored to me_

_It's not that I am old in months_

_and years; if truth be told_

_The friend I love's forgotten me –_

_it's this that makes me old._

****

_Tick. The ceiling stretched higher and higher and higher, into the darkness, into oblivion. The metal buttresses stood, forbidding, arching over and around like a six-legged spider, cornering its prey; the deep, deep thrumming was ever-present, a constant breath, an incessant reminder of life. Tock. Any sound made echoed, a footstep magnifying, bouncing about the walls until only noise remained without any resemblance to its source; far away, bats screeched, butterflies fluttered, and someone turned a page of a medium-sized paperback. Tick. Dust was everywhere, a fine coating thin enough for its scent to be pleasant, bringing to mind remembrances of old bookshops and family attics, and mixed with it were scents of sandalwood and metal and tea and home. Tock. Silk Persian carpets populated the parquet floor, providing purchase and stability and softness under the feet; a giant wall of chests and drawers loomed, within them multitudes of gems and treasures and foods and technologies and rubbish. Hundreds, maybe thousands of clocks ticked rhythmically, off-beat, loud and soft and slow and fast and perfectly on time, like an irregular heartbeat, a noise you didn’t notice until it was suddenly gone.The velvet armchair was soft and supple under him, and the fresh fragrant steam was rising up, up, higher and higher until —_

‘Doctor?’

The Doctor jolted out of his rêverie.

He looked askance at Fitz — who was sat across from him in his own, slightly less impressive armchair, lounging in pyjama pants and his ever-present black leather jacket, off to the side of the TARDIS console room — and glared forcefully at him in a way that was intended to convey absolute and crushing disappointment at being disturbed.

Fitz just looked vaguely bemused.

‘Doctor? You were saying?’

‘What?’ he asked, his voice dripping with what was intended to be contempt, but was probably nervous excitement.

‘You just sort of stopped talking, and I figured you were thinking about what to say, but then you _kept_ not talking, so I figured you’d fallen asleep or something. It’s been five minutes. I’d’ve let you sleep, but the tea’s going to get cold.’

Typical. Didn’t know that his special china teapot was specially engineered to keep liquids inside it extremely warm for an unreasonable period of time, didn’t know not to disturb poor old Time Lords when they were appreciating their home and their surroundings, probably didn’t even know what a helmic regulator was, the poor thing.

Somewhere in the Doctor’s head, a voice that sounded disturbingly like the man sat in front of him started saying that actually, the Doctor didn’t even know himself what a helmic regulator was, but just tugged on it and hoped for the best while driving; the Doctor, appalled at how obviously untrue the things the voice was saying were — of course he knew what a helmic regulator was: it regulated helms — quickly told it to shut up and sod off. The voice retreated, not without a mental noise of satisfaction, and the Doctor frowned.

‘Doctor? You’re doing it again.’

‘What? Sorry.’ He shook his head to clear the cobwebs, his curls swaying violently in front of his face, and leaned back in his chair, regarding his companion with a serene smile. ‘You were saying?’

Fitz glared at him. ‘No, Doctor, _you_ were saying. Something about turkey.’

‘ _Yes!_ Sorry!’ the Doctor exclaimed, and jumped up, clapping his hands together, and evidently startling Fitz, who nearly jumped out of his chair himself. ‘Turkey. Tea, Turkey. Not tea _and_ turkey, though I suppose maybe on Christmas day… anyway, yes. Today’s choice, the _thé du jour_ , a lovely black tea that I obtained in Turkey back in the late…er… nineteenth, was it? No, no, no, early twentieth century.’

‘Right.’

‘Listen, all I’m saying is it was a while back. Loved the town I bought this in, though. Absolutely _tea_ -ming with lovely people.’

‘Doctor—’

‘What? When it _boils_ down to it, it was a good purchase.’

‘Doctor.’

‘Mind you, the price was a bit _steep_ —’

‘Doctor, shut up with the tea puns.’

The Doctor mimed zipping his mouth shut and throwing away the key, his eyes twinkling.

‘Have you got the estekans?’ he asked, a moment later.

‘Gesundheit.’

‘No, no, no, the _cups_! The _estekan_. It’s a Persian word, borrowed from Russian, which in itself originated in Persian, so the whole exchange was a bit pointless, if you ask me.’

‘These, you mean?’ Fitz asked, lifting the two small glass cups he’d been clutching for the past half-hour. They were transparent but for a few colourful lines, small enough to fit a hand around, and in a rounded shape wide on top and bottom but narrow in the middle, like a vase, or a rounded, closed hyperboloid of one sheet. They didn’t have handles; each came with its own transparent saucer, and the Doctor took them, set them on the small side table between the two chairs, and picked up the teapot.

It was their tradition now, his and Fitz’s. Every day (or as close to a day as they could manage aboard the TARDIS), they would sit together in the console room and have a cup of tea, every time a different brew, sampled from the Doctor’s own sizeable collection — Sam was off reading in her room, content to “let the boys have their time together”. Often there would be more than one cup; Assam in the mornings, lapsang souchong at eleven o’clock (on whichever clock the Doctor thought to be closest to local TARDIS time — which was completely arbitrary, of course), and, in the afternoons, sampling different teas. This particular afternoon, the old cuckoo clock had forgotten to chime, so it was the turn of some new, as yet untested flavour. Hence the Turkish tea.

The Doctor poured into the cups from a not inconsiderable height, filling them as much as he dare; setting the teapot down, he handed Fitz his cup and saucer and sat back down with his own. They both spent an inordinate amount of time appreciating the colour of the tea, the way the various light sources made it change and flow, sometimes ruby, sometimes crimson, sometimes scarlet, and deeply inhaling the subtle and pleasant scent: cardamom, saffron, rosewater, bergamot. Both of them took a sip, closed their eyes, and leaned back, making various noises of contentment and pleasure. Finally, after five minutes, Fitz spoke.

‘You said you got this in Turkey? Do you remember when and where exactly?’

The Doctor thought a moment, then said, ‘I do remember, as a matter of fact. Charming little Turkish village, on the Dardanelles; Gelibolu, I think it was called, or _Gallipoli_ to you, I suppose. I think I was there in nineteen-oh-something-or-other, I can’t quite seem to recall exactly. There was a lovely old brick shop, right next to the port, sold all sorts of spices and candies and dried fruits. Owner was a terribly nice chap…we were talking and he persuaded me to try some of his tea, and then of course I had to buy some. You know, of course, this was before tea became popular in Turkey, so it was actually rather rare at the time. All the better for it, I say.’

Fitz raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you actually saying “I drank tea before it was cool _”_?’

‘Yes, I suppose I am!’ The Doctor grinned. ‘Poor shopkeeper, though, never knew what happened to him. The whole port was blown to bits during the First World War.’ He frowned, then shot Fitz a wicked smile.

‘One day it was there, the next,’ he said, and, to punctuate his point, he brought his legs up and emphatically placed his feet on the pouf in front of him, ‘ _pouf_! It was gone!’

Fitz groaned out loud.

After a few moments of silence interspersed with the Doctor’s chuckles, he brought his head back up suddenly, a gleam in his eye.

‘Doctor?’ he asked, as the Doctor was raising his cup to his lips. ‘You said Turkey before the First World War, right?’

The Doctor nodded, mid-sip.

Fitz grinned, and put his own feet up on his own footrest. ‘Surely that would make it the _Ottoman_ Empire, wouldn’t it?’

The Doctor choked.

Some time later, their theistic urges somewhat sated, the Doctor and Fitz were idly conversing, the topic at hand shifting from cinema, to poetry, to art more broadly, and finally to music. The Doctor had produced a recorder from nowhere, inevitably re-igniting their old arguments about, as Fitz liked to call it, “the murder of innocent tunes.” They quipped and riposted for a good ten minutes, and the Doctor just sat back and enjoyed it, words flying fast and furiously, but always affectionately between them.

‘Every time, Doctor. Every time you play something on that godawful recorder of yours, my ears plead for a more merciful death.’

‘This, can I point out, is somewhat rich coming from a man whose grasp of music theory is clearly indistinguishable even at the quantum scale.’

Fitz huffed, and stood, forcefully walking away towards his room. The Doctor started to get up, motioning to apologise, but Fitz smiled and shook his head at him, disappearing into the corridors. Three minutes later, he re-emerged, electric guitar in one hand and amp in the other, and reseated himself emphatically in front of the Doctor.

‘Go on, then.’

The Doctor raised a questioning eyebrow.

‘Play your horrible music, Doctor, and we’ll see if my “grasp of music indistinguishable even at the quantum scale” can keep up.’

The Doctor grinned, and got up himself, striding towards the opposite end of the console room. He retrieved a case from one of the innumerable chests, and returned, plonking it down in front of Fitz and pulling out a violin.

‘Shall we?’

Fitz raised both his eyebrows up high, an incredulous smile on his face, and launched into a riff in B major that, after numerous tonal somersaults and a few false notes, somehow managed to modulate into a much improved rendition of ‘Fly Me To The Moon’. Frank Sinatra indeed! When Fitz finished with a quick, cheeky little bow and looked at him, expectant, the Doctor lifted his bow contemptuously (which probably came across as eagerness again‚ he thought ruefully), closed his eyes, and began a flurry of arpeggios that settled into Paganini’s 24th caprice. 

‘Did you know that I helped old Niccolò write this one? The poor chap had sprained his wrist the day before–’, the Doctor started to say, mid-ascending scale, when to his surprise he heard a very loud chord from Fitz’s electric guitar, somehow perfectly in harmony to his melody. He opened his eyes, and saw that Fitz was leaning back in his armchair, a smile on his face, and was strumming a tune that perfectly paired with his! 

The Doctor narrowed his eyes, and shifted suddenly from Paganini to Mendelssohn, playing the violin concerto without an orchestra; Fitz narrowed his own, locked them with his, and began to play, and suddenly it was as if there was an orchestra after all.

When Sam found them, five hours later, the violin and the electric guitar were safely tucked away in a corner of the console room. The armchairs that had been facing each other were now beside each other, Fitz was wearing the Doctor’s velvet coat and the Doctor Fitz’s leather jacket, and the Doctor had his head on Fitz’s shoulder.

Both of them were snoring.

****

_To me, at first, the heights and depths_

_Of Being were unknown,_

_But schooled in my longing for you_

_How well-informed I’ve grown!_

_And from that moment that your glance_

_First troubled me, I’m sure_

_I’ve been immune to all the pain_

_The last days have in store._

****

The Doctor jolted out of his rêverie.

The lights in the console room had darkened, his book had fallen onto the floor, and his tea had gone cold.

He looked around in dismay, searching for a fading sound of laughter, echoing and disappearing in the enormity of the room.

His biscuits, half-eaten, were still there, so he picked one up and bit into it, bending down to retrieve his book.

On his way back up, he spotted the leather jacket draped over the electric guitar, and smiled.

_Some time later, when the Doctor would be running and running and running, he would finally stop, somewhere in twelfth-century Essex. He would bring a tank with him, and introduce the people there to the word ‘dude’ several centuries early. Most importantly, though, he would commemorate himself. He would wear a long scarf, a bow tie, a violently colourful coat, a stick of celery, and frequently grasp his lapels, and also, for an extended period of time, wear a worn but still shiny black leather jacket._

_When Clara would finally come to bring him back to his senses, he would be playing an old black electric guitar._

_‘It’s my party,’ he would say, and while the leather jacket would have been returned to the TARDIS wardrobe to live out its days, it would remain sharp in the Doctor’s mind._

_‘And all of me is invited.’_

_And the electric guitar would stay._

**Author's Note:**

> Poem: هر چند پیر و خسته دل و ناتوان شدم, by Hafez Shirazi. Translation adapted from Dick Davis in the book _Faces of Love_.
> 
> Come say hi on tumblr! I'm @joking-mr-feynman.


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